Tick prevention in the yard

Preventing Ticks in the Yard — Guide from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrates how to make yards less attractive to ticks through landscaping.

Create a Tick-Safe Zone — Cornell Cooperative Extension of Onondaga County shares tips on how to create a tick safe zone at home.

25 Plants That Repel Ticks — Happy DIY Home lists 25 plants that can repel ticks in your yard.

Protection for people

Preventing Tick Bites on People — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offer tips on tick bite prevention.

TickEncounter — University of Rhode Island provides information on protective dress, clothing repellant and daily tick checks.

Find the Repellent that is Right for You — Use the EPA search tool to help you choose the repellent product that is right for you.

Tick Repellant Roundup — Use this Tick Repellent Roundup from Global Lyme Alliance to help understand the various on-skin and on-clothing repellent ingredients and their pros and cons.

Protection for our animals

Animal Lyme Testing for Dogs and Horses — Cornell University, College of Veterinary Science lab offers an antibody test for the causative agent of Lyme disease.

Save the Tick and send it out for testing! — TICK TESTING CURRENTLY PAUSED - Upstate Medical University’s Thangamani Laboratory provides free tick testing within New York State as part of a research project.

Alternate tick testing sites — While Upstate Tick Testing is on pause, visit the Pennsylvania Health Dept website for a listing of fee-based tick testing options.

What diseases can ticks carry? — The CDC provides an overview of diseases carried by ticks, along with common signs & symptoms, diagnosis and treatment.

When should I be concerned? Signs and Symptoms of Untreated Lyme Disease — Untreated Lyme disease can produce a wide range of symptoms, depending on the stage of infection. These include fever, rash, facial paralysis, and arthritis. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide a quick guide of common symptoms to look for in early and late-stage Lyme Disease.

Stages of Lyme Disease — Lyme disease occurs in three stages: early localized, early disseminated and late disseminated. However, the stages can overlap and not all patients go through all three. Global Lyme Alliance discusses common indicators of the different stages of Lyme Disease.

Children and Lyme Disease — Although anyone can get Lyme disease, children spend a lot of time outdoors and are at particular risk. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide tips on how tick-borne disease affects children.

Find a doctor — See your primary care doctor or an infectious disease specialist for diagnosis and treatment. Visit our local provider page for additional options.

— Most people who are diagnosed properly with Lyme disease and treated effectively, go on to live normal lives, however, research suggests that approximately 15% to 20% of those diagnosed and treated do not respond completely to treatment and experience ongoing symptoms.

Chronic Lyme disease: Everything you need to know — Medical News Today discusses possible causes, diagnosis, and treatments for Chronic Lyme Disease.

Lyme disease: Resolving the “Lyme wars” — Harvard Medical School provides insight into the main controversies surrounding Lyme disease and Chronic Lyme or Post Lyme Treatment Syndrome.

What is PTLDS? — Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS) / Chronic Lyme / Persistent Lyme are names of a disease that results from an infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, which is carried by ticks.

Tick-Borne Diseases — The CDC has published a Reference Guide for Healthcare Providers to provide healthcare workers with up-to-date information.

Diagnosis, Treatment and Testing — The CDC provides recommendations on diagnosis, treatment and testing and case forms along with learning tools for clinicians.

IDSA Lyme Disease Guidelines - 1990 — Clinical practice guidelines developed by the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 1990 to assist practitioners and patients in making decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. New Draft IDSA Lyme Disease Guidelines are being reviewed currently.

ILADS Evidence Assessments and Guideline Recommendations in Lyme Disease — International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society details their clinical practice guidelines - Evidence Assessments and Guideline Recommendations in Lyme Disease: The Clinical Management of Known Tick Bites, Erythema Migrans Rashes and Persistent Disease.

Lyme Education for Healthcare Professionals — The CNY Lyme & TBD Alliance, in partnership with SUNY Upstate Institute for Global Health and the Trudeau Institute, hosted a Lyme Summit to provide CME continuing education for healthcare professionals to learn about diagnosing and treating Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

Tick-Borne Disease Research

Anti-tick Vaccines — The Thangamani Lab at Upstate Medical University is developing novel anti- tick vaccines and therapeutics to prevent and control tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease and Powassan encephalitis. The lab has identified multiple candidates and is currently validating their efficacy in preventing tick bites and tick-borne disease transmission.

Vector-Borne Disease Ecology — The Leydet Lab at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry is interested in understanding complex vector-borne disease systems. They are using tick-borne diseases, to identify factors that influence the ecology of pathogens in vector-host systems and how this affects human health.

Community Engaged Tick Surveillance Data — The Thangamani lab at Upstate Medical University is tracking the emergence of ticks and tick-borne diseases in New York. The data from this research will allow improved understanding of how climate change and human behavior, accelerates the spread of ticks and tick-borne diseases in New York.

Rapid Lyme disease test may be available in late 2020 — A new detection test created by Ionica Sciences – located at Cornell’s McGovern Center life sciences incubator – has begun moving from the laboratory bench into approvals, production and doctors’ offices. They are hopeful the test will be available later this year.

Clinical Trials

— Research is being conducted to better understand the persistent symptoms experienced by this subset of patients with preliminary data suggesting the culprit of the complex chronic challenges include a compromised immune system and/or ongoing tick-borne disease.

Biomarker Study of Previously Treated Lyme Disease Volunteers in Comparison to Healthy Volunteers — Non-interventional study evaluating stool and blood samples collected from individuals previously treated with Lyme disease versus healthy volunteers

A Brain Imaging Study of Chronic Pain in Post-Treatment Lyme Disease — Columbia University is seeking to study why some individuals continue to experience chronic symptoms of Lyme Disease, such as pain, fatigue, sensory hypersensitivity, and neurocognitive difficulties long after receiving treatment.

The Burden of Lyme Disease (BOLD) in a Pandemic - Insights From an Online Cross-sectional and Prospective Cohort Survey — A cross-sectional descriptive survey of the BOLD for individuals after having been ill with COVID-19 or have taken the COVID-19 vaccine will be compared with that of individuals who have neither been ill with COVID-19 nor taken the COVID-19 vaccine. Individuals who have both been ill and taken the COVID-19 vaccine will be compared to identify any additive risk factors.

A Comprehensive Clinical, Microbiological and Immunological Assessment of Patients With Suspected Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome and Selected Control Populations — This study will determine whether patients who have been infected with the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, and treated with antibiotics still have the bacteria alive inside them and whether it is causing their symptoms.

Evaluation and Follow-up of People With Tick-borne Diseases — To evaluate and follow people with tick-borne diseases to help researchers learn more about these infections.

Evaluation, Treatment, and Follow-up of Patients With Lyme Disease — This study is designed to establish a population of patients with Lyme disease for evaluation, treatment and follow-up to learn more about the infection. Patients with active Lyme disease may be eligible for this study.

A Healthy Volunteer in the study "Understanding Chronic Lyme Pain - A Brain Imaging Study" — We are inviting healthy volunteers to participate in our brain imaging study. This study aims to investigate persistent pain in Lyme disease. By using brain imaging (functional MRI), we hope to gain a better understanding of why patients have ongoing problems with persistent pain, fatigue, and sensory sensitivity even after antibiotic treatment.

Human Immune Response to Ixodes Scapularis Tick Bites — Each year, the number of cases of tick-borne diseases increases. The deer tick (Ixodes scapularis) is the vector of at least 7 pathogens that cause human diseases, including Lyme disease. Researchers want to learn more to help them develop vaccines against ticks in the future.

Lyme Disease Vaccine Trial — The VALOR clinical trial is studying a potential Lyme Disease vaccine to see if it may protect people against contracting Lyme Disease (also called Lyme borreliosis).

A Non-Interventional Pilot Study to Explore the Role of Gut Flora in Lyme Disease — This study seeks to correlate microbiome sequencing data with information provided by patients and their medical records regarding Lyme Disease

Rheumatology Patient Registry and Biorepository — A rheumatology biorepository will be created to permit comparative analyses between the rheumatic diseases in order to increase the understanding of disease pathogenesis. Patients seen at Yale clinics diagnosed with rheumatic diseases are invited to participate in this study. These rheumatic diseases include, but are not limited to: adult onset Still's disease, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, reactive arthritis, antiphospholipid syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, Behcet's disease, dermatomyositis, polymyositis, giant cell arteritis and other vasculitides, Lyme's disease, mixed connective tissue disease, polymyalgia rheumatica, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidosis, systemic sclerosis (scleroderma), Sjogren's syndrome, and undifferentiated connective tissue disease.

Symptomatic Management of Lyme Arthritis — The purpose of the research study is to evaluate whether there is symptomatic benefit of schedule NSAID therapy in patients with Lyme arthritis diagnosis.

Understanding Chronic Lyme Pain - A Healthy Control Brain Imaging Study — Columbia University is recruiting healthy volunteers to participate in our diagnostic brain imaging study. This new study aims to investigate individuals experiencing persistent pain that was triggered by Lyme Disease.

Vagus Nerve Stimulation: A New Treatment Study for Previously Treated Lyme Disease Patients with Persistent Symptoms — Are you suffering from persistent symptoms that began after you were diagnosed and treated with antibiotics for Lyme Disease? This new research study aims to test a new form of treatment for people with persistent symptoms despite antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease.